I do not use Edge & normally get rid of it within a few days of it being forced upon me once more. Normally, I would be happy for something like Edge to sit there unused. After all, an extra web browser could be handy. But it simply sits there unused acquiring extra unwanted & un-needed duplicate files. At one point, on an earlier experience with Edge, I ended up with just over 100 duplicate files with a month I have no idea what I started with, on that occasion. but it was a fraction of that.
Personally I do not Microsoft or Google & Edge is a mixture of both, so god knows how much spyware there is within the program, as both love to collect as much information on us as they can get away with.
What I find with Edge is. If I do nothing & simply watch, over the days/weeks, the number of duplicate files increase. I have asked Microsoft support for an explanation, but they simply say the ever-increasing number of duplicates are needed. Not why they increase in number so dramatically, even when the program is not used.
No other program on my PC does anything even remotely similar & no other program has ever needed to be unloaded to stop it growing so dramatically in size.
Just removed Edge from one of my PC’s using the second method in the link, pretty straight forward. Getting the Edge version number is a bit of faff and neither will it be installed again, fingers crossed.
I have offloaded Edge from mine several times & have now altered the value to one, so it will hopefully not reload again. But we should not have Edge forced on us like that. So maybe it’s time to move to a different operating system.
I have a laptop for radio use that runs on Ubuntu & have even tried the open source Chrome OS system, but if I do move, then it will probably be to Free BSD, which is the best of the ones I have tried.
I have no problem with Edge, still have it on one PC it is not my default browser and I have not had any issues, don’t want to sound like a broken record but as I have no idea what you mean by duplicate files and where they occur it is difficult to suggest a solution.
For me, the user experience is better. My understanding is that Linux is best if you run any servers, but I don’t. I just want an independent operating system & because it’s not Windows or Linux, viruses are not really an issue & I am told it is more stable than Linux, not that I have had any issues with newer versions of Linux.
Thanks Gee3 - I haven’t had any issues with Linux Mint as a user OS but I’m always interested to look at other distros. One thing I find with Mint is that it is forever being updated. I don’t mind that too much but it does make me want to refresh the update list every time I use it. Nearly always some more available. Is it the same with FreeBSD?
I find that if I don’t run a Registry check & a defrag after an update, my system starts to slow with windows. Windows is a good system, in many ways, but without good houskeeping, you don’t get the best from it.
In the same way I am far from a fan of Google, but their operating system is very good, for what it is. I just hate their data collection.
Since the mid 90’s when BSD began, there have been 11 or 12 versions. So it’s not terrible.
The PC I had FreeBSD on ended up being used for tracking aircraft, I had 3 receiver usb dongles operating on 1080MHz. The aircraft, Automatic Dependent Surveillance- Broadcast (ADS-B) Which sends out tracking information on most aircraft. But I needed to change to either a Raspberry Pi or an Apple system to keep doing that, so I dropped that PC from my feed & now use a windows system for my own feed. & do not send a feed to anyone else.
So PC was never really updated. I fed the USB dongle receiver information out, but the PC it’s self had no internet connection to update via. That kept the system stable & I just ran occasional checks to keep it running smoothly.
But I am currently seriously thinking of buying a reasonable used, newer PC & putting BSD on that.
That’s about the same with Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) …but then comes the subsequent updates to the major versions. It’s those that are very frequent. They don’t have to be installed but they probably are improvements to the OS and best accepted. I might give FreeBSD a try,
